“Those Who Wait”
A Communion Meditation
Isaiah 40:21-31, Mark 1:29-39
Dr. Thomas E. Sagendorf First Congregational UCC
Fifth Sunday After Epiphany February 5,2012
We were traveling in Michigan on a Saturday in November. Headed to Grand Rapids where, on the next day, I would preach the final worship service in my home church (a church that had 1400 members when I went to college and had dwindled down to a meager handful).
It was a long drive, and I was preoccupied with what was coming. Would the service go well?, I wondered. Would my Christian Witness be appropriate? Would I be able to keep myself together?
It was past noon, and we decided to turn off the freeway for lunch. Fast food. We chose Burger King.
The first hint that we’d made a bad choice was seeing all the parents and children. And the long lines. Something about Pokemon. But we pressed on. In the end, it took us forty minutes just to be served. Then we still had to sit down and eat. I was fit to be tied.
In a hurry and already feeling anxious, the waiting just about did me in.
It’s hard to be patient, isn’t it? Waiting in heavy traffic with no escape. Waiting for important test results. Waiting for someone to deliver on a promise. Waiting for a new world to emerge--a world of peace, justice, and human understanding.
Sometimes the waiting becomes almost unbearable.
Our Hebrew Bible Lesson this morning is about people who were waiting for the Lord. A people who’d lost everything. You can almost hear the collective cry of those whose situation seemed hopeless. “How long, O Lord, how long?”
This is no puppet God whom we meet in the 40th Chapter of Isaiah. Certainly not the celestial good buddy whom we find in today’s pop religion. This is the Holy One who sits above the circle of the earth. Who stretches out the heavens and brings princes to naught.
This is a God of eternal majesty who is great in strength and mighty in power. One whose understandings are unsearchable.
This is the God for whom we wait. As Abraham waited for an heir. As Moses waited to see the Promised Land. As the prophets waited for justice to roll down like waters. As the disciples waited for the coming of the Holy Spirit.
Yet, for those who wait, there is hope. The kind of hope that makes all the difference in the world.
Those who wait for the Lord will not be forgotten, says the scripture. They will be remembered and given strength.
Listen.
“The Lord is an everlasting God,” says the Prophet, who “does not grow weary.”
“God gives power to the faint and strengthens the powerless.”
Well, that’s us! We who have been battered and bruised by life’s harsh realities. We who sometimes wonder if God has gone away. We who cry out, in the dark night of the soul, “How long, O Lord, how long?”
The proud and powerful don’t think they need help. After all, they have it all They have the answers and know the way of the future.
But we’re not among the proud and powerful, you and I. Sometimes we have a hard time just making it through the day.
This, then, is the Word of Isaiah for those who wait. WHO WAIT FOR THE LORD.
Ours is a majestic God. A Holy God whose understandings are unsearchable. But those who wait, especially the faint, the weary, and the powerless, will be given strength. Not only to walk, but to fly!
Hear the Good News.
Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.
